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Health & Fitness

The Dying Arts


In a secluded corner of Swampscott High School there are a series of classes that remain unrecognized throughout much of the school year. The Swampscott High School Fine Arts department, facing consolidation and budget cuts, suffers each semester. Similar to many arts programs across the nation, fine arts classes at Swampscott High are often limited, full, and underappreciated.

 

Swampscott Fine Arts Department consists of a medley of talented teachers, united by their shared subject. Fine arts, as the subject is deemed, actually encompasses a variety of very distinct courses- including music, media literacy, television production, sculpture, photography, and visual arts classes. The department must choose core curriculum standards as a whole, despite the fact that the courses span different creative fields. Should the goals for a piano class be the same as the goals for a darkroom photography class?

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Because fine arts classes are considered elective courses, all students must dabble within the department, but none are guaranteed a class they actually wish to take. Oftentimes students enroll in a class only to fulfill the graduation requirement, reducing spaces for those with a genuine interest in the course. The high school’s new requirement of allowing students only one study hall a year exacerbates the problem. By forcing students to take electives such as fine arts in lieu of a study hall, Swampscott High fills the limited fine arts classes with unhappy students and restricts the number of seats available for students interested in the class.

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The Fine Arts department is also small, with only five teachers. Some teachers must teach six of seven periods, greatly reducing their preparation time for each class. Students find taking a class difficult since many of the courses are only taught during one period, which often runs concurrently with an academic requirement that they must take.

 

After school there are limited arts-oriented extracurricular activities for students to partake in. Recently, students have begun to counteract this by creating their own clubs, though it is impossible for clubs that require school-provided supplies, such as visual arts clubs. While new music and photography groups offer hope, arts opportunities are still extremely slim.

 

As a senior interested in visual art, I have experienced flaws of the arts program. Each year I struggled to squeeze a studio art class into my schedule. My freshman year I switched into a different English class for the second semester to take an art class instead of the study hall I initially received. I took two quarters of studio art unofficially after mandatory quarter-long blocks of health, which become study halls since no other quarter-long classes are offered. I repeated the same studio arts course last year that I had taken sophomore year because it was the only art class offered during my free period. This year, due to omnipresent scheduling conflicts, I have no art classes at all.

 

Since I have always been interested in art, I sought lessons outside of school to compensate for my lack of art classes and clubs. I hope to study art in college, and had to create my portfolio without the aid of Swampscott High School art classes. I continue to doodle on every piece of homework I have, but I know that not everyone will. I need to engage both my mind and my hands, and I am not alone. What about the students who cannot take classes in the arts?

 

Conditions of the arts program at Swampscott High School frustrate both students and teachers, and Swampscott is not alone- nationally, public schools are guilty of reducing art programs more than any other department. 

 

Why are the arts in public schools so undervalued? To many communities across the nation, the arts are merely elective courses, shuttled behind the important core subjects of reading comprehension, mathematics, sciences, foreign languages, and humanities. Students must be well versed in mandatory material that they will be tested on, either by the state or in preparation for a higher education. As core curriculum fluctuates, schools become pressured to increase academic requirements, often at the expense of simple electives such as the arts.

 

Losing arts programs has more consequences than many people may realize. For some students, fine arts classes offer technical skills needed to apply to a professional program such as a school of art or music. For others, the art classes balance a mandatory academic course load. For all, the arts offer a method of self-expression often otherwise unseen in a scholastic atmosphere. Arts courses help foster 21st century workforce ideals such as creative thinking, problem solving, and communication. The arts have intrinsic value and benefit every student in a variety of ways. Though these benefits are often immeasurable by standardized tests, they remain as vital to public education as the skills that are learned for testing purposes.    

 

Arts classes are an integral part of any learning experience. It’s time we, as a community, took a stand for them.


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